Conscious Leaders & Dream Weavers With Ina Gjikondi And Bonnie Buckner

2 Jan , 2022 podcasts

 

How do you create lives of meaning and service? By becoming conscious leaders and dream weavers. Today, Katherine Twells has two special guests to introduce to you – Bonnie Buckner and Ina Gjikondi. Bonnie is the Founder and Head of the International Institute for Dreaming and Imagery. Ina is the Founder & e-Co Leadership Coaching Program Director at George Washington University’s Center for Excellence in Public Leadership. Bonnie and Ina talk about listening to your dreams, opening yourself up to the world, and connecting with your inner intuition. Because when you follow your intuition, you make better decisions. Do you want to create lives of meaning and service? This episode is what you need. Tune in!

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Conscious Leaders & Dream Weavers With Ina Gjikondi And Bonnie Buckner

How Exploring The Inner Landscape Can Create Lives Of Meaning And Service

We’re talking about the extraordinary and curious inner landscape and how this exploration allows us to live a richer experience in our lives. My guests are collaborators on the journey to a more conscious and joyful human experience and I know we all want more of that. As creators and facilitators of the e-Co Leadership Program at GWU, they’re using their gifts to allow others to step into greater awareness of how to best serve the collective.

Before we start the conversation, I want to share a little about each of these amazing women. I’ll start with Ina. Ina Gjikondi is a teacher, speaker, mother, creative thinker, innovator, poet and co-curator of Creative Learning Experiences that are designed to expand consciousness in the world. She serves as the Director of Executive Education and Coaching, Founder in e-Co Leadership Coach and Program Director at The George Washington University Center for Excellence in Public Leadership.

The e-Co Leadership Coaching Certification is rooted in the cultivation of inner awareness, interconnectivity and the power of co-creation in service to the greatest of good. Ina works with people across the globe to awaken the leadership capacity through the whole system, knowing and being, mobilizing the capacities of spaciousness, perception, imagination and creativity.

She believes that our work as humanity is not about finding answers but about getting very clear in our questions and getting ourselves out of the way, allowing the collective field to emerge with possibility. Before moving to the US, Ina was an active United Nations advocate, political campaign professional and founder of several nonprofit organizations in her native home of Albania. She’s inspired by her son, Hadrian, who teaches her to slow down and show up for life with genuine curiosity. To develop this creative dialogue, she founded Hadrian Series, a learning hub to support families through embodied conversations, celebrating the wonders of life every day.

My other very distinguished guest is the amazing Bonnie Buckner. She teaches dreaming and imagery techniques to individuals and organizations for individual development, creativity and project manifestation. To serve this greater collective, we’ve been talking about how to find solutions for a social and global challenge.

She has a PhD in Psychology and her academic work has centered on the use of images as cognitive tools for behavior change. She’s the Founder and Head of the International Institute for Dreaming and Imagery. She serves as a senior fellow at the George Washington University Center for Excellence in Public Leadership and a co-faculty director at the e-Co Leadership Coaching Program.

Her book, Dream Yourself Into Being, teaches us some of the basics of dreamwork and how she’s used them in her personal life. It’s a truly beautiful exploration of the power of this work and the way that it can unlock secrets to an elevated way of living. Ina and Bonnie bring all of themselves to their mission. I can speak from personal experience that their collaboration creates a truly open space where you can imagine, dream and create in ways that make the journey together even more rewarding. Without any further ado, I hope you’ll enjoy this conversation with two very visionary leaders.

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Bonnie and Ina, thank you so much for taking the time to have this conversation with me. I appreciate it.

Thank you, Kathy.

It’s a pleasure.

For those of my readers reading this, hopefully, it will feel like sitting eavesdropping at a table of old friends because Bonnie and Ina are amazing people that I have gotten to know in 2021 and have been a true gift to my life. I am excited to share them with you because there is going to be a lot of wisdom coming your way in this conversation.

I have already shared their amazing, brilliant bios at the beginning of this episode. There’s always more to the story than someone’s resume and biography as we launch into this. We’re going to start this conversation with the origin story like we always do. Bonnie, I want to start with you. Let everyone know a little bit about what shaped you along your journey and what brought you to where you are.

I will go way to the origin. When I was three years old, I had a nightmare that made me understand that I would be teaching people how to transform nightmares. I had been having nightmares for some time and went through a series of questions within myself. I remember sitting out on our little curb sidewalk there and I thought there’s only one way, every road that I was going down. I’ll never sleep again. I’ll make my mom keep me up at night and I kept going down these different roads of what I could do about it.

I realized there was only one thing to do about it: transform them. I didn’t know how or what that would be. I was very blessed to have a father and a grandmother who talked a lot about dreaming. My father, in particular, made me understand that whatever our passions are, that is a form of dreaming when we follow them.

I very quickly made a connection between what we dream at night and what we live in the day. That started me on my path and that path went various places, from working in community development to politics. I spent some time in the feature and documentary film world. It led me to coaching and to what I do.

Bonnie, what’s so amazing about that is the threads that have run through many conversations I’ve had with people on this show. When we get into the origin story, it is often a moment, pattern or traumatic event that we experience in our childhood that is the birthing place of this road that we travel. As I think about it, no one likes to have a nightmare as a kid. It’s a very scary thing.

I’m amazed at how you had the maturity of mind to look at the transformation and embark on the path that you did. You took it in so many different directions. You’ve taken it into Psychology and social service, into greater evolution of consciousness. Can you share more about how some of those things emerged along the way?

My father, at one point, when I got a little bit older and I was maybe junior high or high school, had me make a list of everything that was super interesting to me. It was writing, Psychology, movies, helping people. I didn’t know how to describe that. I made my list and went to university. I graduated and thought, “I don’t know what to do.” Things were leading me in the film direction and I started down that road.

At each moment, there was something and it happened that my whole story is a dreaming story. There was always an inner movement in me. It’s where it starts. I hear the still quiet voice that tells me that time and the season for what I’m doing are changing and I start to feel the next thing coming. I call it my dreamers ears.

They’re very awake and an opportunity will cross my path. Someone will ask a question. That’s how I transitioned into politics. Someone asked a question of the partner that I founded the company with that made us realize there was a huge gap in the information that we could fit and it slid in. Every turn in my life has led in some way by dreaming, whether it’s sleep dreaming or walking the dream in waking life.

Whatever our passions are, that is a form of dreaming when we follow them. Click To Tweet

Two of the things came up for me as you shared that. One was the power of our mentors, whether there are people in our family or outside of our family, to help us realize our gifts and also the amazing amount of intuitive tuning in that you have. We’ve had several conversations on the show about mindfulness, space, presence and its cultivation.

What’s true for you and I know it is for Ina as we start to get into her story, the ability to hear that still voice inside is a powerful thing. It’s something we all need to cultivate to live our most true pathways. Thank you for being a model. That’s extraordinary. Ina, I’m going to turn to you to share a little bit more about your origin story, childhood, plot twist and the things that brought you to now.

When I think about my origin story, I go back to my childhood and the practice of remembering. Remember, it’s the process I’ve been a part of in my adult life. Some of these things I didn’t remember then and they come up as part of this learning and being in the world in a new way. I can remember that I could have been maybe seven years old, but even earlier than that, every story in my childhood and I grew up in Albania is related to some element of the land and something that has to do with nature.

My mother told me this piece of the story and I have some pictures so I can go back and see that when I was born, I was tiny. The air of the city was not very good for me. I was getting sick. My grandmother lived in the mountains in a little city called Kruja, which is very close to Tirana, where we used to live. They took me there high up in the mountains.

If you’ve seen those pictures of goats that go and walk in those tiny narrow streets, that’s how it is. They kept me there maybe for a couple of months or so. Everything shifted that air at the mountain. Being with the goats and animals fueled that spirit. What I have come to believe and know is that going back to the city, I never forgot. Every time I would get sick, I would get well if I was close to a tree or bush.

I remember having what I call communing, which is the conversations with the plants, but I remember moments where I would feel unwell, stock or a question was around me. The plum tree or the pomegranate bush in my neighborhood would be that safe space where I would connect with and there was always something that I would know. I didn’t remember this until my late twenties when the crack light came in. One of those moments came back into my life when I started remembering what it was to be in that space.

Growing up every summer, I would go to my grandparents in the mountains and spend time with the goats, cows and roses. Those memories are not just memories. It’s a quality of aesthetics, perception and heightening our possibility, openness to feel the world more and to be more tuned to the world. That gets you a little bit of where my journey started. Part of my practice is I have to remember those moments where I’m not well and I need to shift into wellness. Going into the land, it’s one of those places and spaces that is healing.

Similar to Ina, to what we were talking with Bonnie about, knowing, listening to that inner guidance, and seeing the difference. I had a teacher who was teaching yoga. She said, “Most people walk around all the time not knowing how good they could feel. They accept the fact that they don’t feel good.” It’s like an unconsciousness or being asleep and when you can suddenly open yourself up to the effect of your environment.

I took my leadership team to Ojai, California. For anyone who’s ever been to Ojai, it is a stunningly beautiful place. They have pink mountains and huge oak trees with lanterns. It’s gorgeous. We go there to change our conversation, change our energy, space, and go deeper or find a greater connection. I said, “Isn’t it magical the way these aesthetic changes are being?” She said, “It has a completely different energy.” I hear as you’re describing the difference between being in that city place or that place where you’re close to nature. It’s amazing.

My curiosity has continued to spur me in that direction. My research is in that space of understanding aesthetics and it’s important to know. Merleau-Ponty calls them the dynamics of the field to feel the world. We feel the world in relation. We don’t just feel it on our own. That conversation with the tree opens up the field of knowing and awareness, which helps you slow down when you take that picture in slow-motion.

It slows you down to the point that you can start hearing your voice and get in touch with your inner knowing. Sometimes when I think of aesthetics that it is something that it’s beautiful, it doesn’t have to be beautiful. It’s what gets your attention. What calls you at that moment that opens up the field of being? Through that, we become aware of our awareness. We listen and tune in.

It’s not necessarily beauty that resonates with you. Here you’ve taken this incredible intuitive connection, the interconnectivity of all things. You’ve parlayed that into your work, study, research and into the e-Co Leadership Program that we’re going to talk about. That’s a big part of the collaboration between you and Bonnie.

 

Can you share how your paths intersected? We’re having this conversation because I met both of you through your e-Co Coaching Program, where you teach leaders how to do the inner work? How to show up for coaching? How to be present? You and Bonnie collaborate on a program that is unlike no other in the marketplace from a personal evolution of coaching standpoint. Can you share and I’d love Bonnie’s adding to the commentary of how your collaboration came together?

I’m going to use Bonnie’s language here. It was the dream field that brought us together.

I’m so glad you said that. I was waiting to see how’s Ina going to answer this because, for me, it was 100% a dream and action.

It was a dream field. I was in the process of putting together the program and having conversations with all kinds of people, faculty. Going back to think about it, we didn’t even talk about coaching in the beginning. It wasn’t about coaching at all. I’m remembering. It was my curiosity of that moment in time in my life, how my dreams had become so vivid and spoke to me in all kinds of ways.

I had dreams at night and during the day. It was that field. Bonnie appeared at that time through a joint connection. She was a new doorway of meaning-making and served as a great mirror to help me see my dreams through what I was experiencing. It was quickly not only nourishing and enriching for me but what I also started noticing and attending to was this quality of flow. When I have the quality of flow or I am in that presence, there’s research through it. You want more of it. It’s contagious.

One more of it in a way that nourishes you, it’s not in excess. I don’t want to touch that, but I want to make that clear too. With Bonnie, it was easy to be in conversation, to think through and it was always something that was building up. We would start to one place and move. Things would open up and expand.

There is this illusion that there's a split between body and mind. That’s when we have the inner conflict. Click To Tweet

What was also beautiful is that our conversations were catalysts for other dreams. It wasn’t just, “How are we going to figure this out? What about this?” We always landed into something that moved things and they moved things quickly. The manifestation was happening rather fast and had a lot of fronts. That partnering was easy. Then it moved into the coaching program space. We’ve been for years, co-creating and working together.

It sounds like there was so much emergence. It was constantly being born. The thing that I’m always amazed and when I’ve experienced flow, either flow states or even flow projects, I would call them in my life, where everything built itself in odd ways. The right people and the characters would enter the set, everything would work and you’d be like, “That’s amazing how that happens,” versus other times when you’re hitting a wall and you’re like, “I’m going in the wrong direction. This is not inflow.” It’s amazing when you see that. Bonnie, what did it feel much the same for you? You were nodding your head. For those of you reading, Bonnie is like, “Yes.” How was it for you?

How The Right People Comes Into Your Life

From my end, it was a mutual connection. You got to meet Ina and we met. Right away, we moved into dreaming, an actual night dream. We had talked the first time around this thing. I said, “I have a dream. Let’s meet next week.” It was a boom and we plunged. One of the things that I talk about is the two steps to dreaming. We have to receive the dream on the interior and manifest it. Ina spoke about manifesting. Both things were there for me and meeting Ina in that. She is completely open to receiving the dream. In that space of receiving the dream, there is no starting to close it down. Yes but, there’s none of that.

It’s the dreaming, being completely expanded and speaking of dreaming language, which doesn’t make any sense at all on a linear timeline but makes all the sense in the world in the place of possibility. I could speak that language. What was super striking to me was the word quicksilver came up. For me, when I think about Ina, it’s that rapid way of manifesting because early on, she said, “I’ve got this idea for the coaching program and it’s going to be with you. This is how it’s going to happen.” We just met and I was thinking, “Okay.” That began to truly unfold quickly.

Having experienced the program, it is remarkable how it weaves from the dream state into quantum mechanical interconnectivity into nature. It is an extraordinary mural of beautiful pathways to explore. In the entire time when we’re in it, we can only knock on the door. That’s because the emergence has never-ending. We are always in evolution.

People who read this are from everywhere. There’ll be people from the Coca-Cola company, summit community and then people who have found us out in the world. People will be on a continuum of some people who have had some experiences in this realm. Others are like, “I don’t even remember my dreams. I don’t even know what they’re talking about. I don’t dream at all.” How can you share with them how some of this work starts to open up our intuitive insights?

The first thing I tell people is we’re dreaming all the time. If I put you in an EEG machine or something with this at MRI, the centers of dreaming are alive. They’re moving and lit up. We’re dreaming all the time. The difference is how much time we spend in the executive action that works part of our brain, which is list-making, is tied to a linear timeline because it takes past information to make a future decision. It only goes back and forth between known material, but that’s only one circuit of cognition in our brain.

The other circuit of cognition, which is called different things, we can talk about as the distributed mood network, is relatively newly discovered because of the instrumentation being relatively new for looking at it. The ancients will tell you this same thing I’m going to tell you, which is it’s operating all the time when we allow the list-making executive action that works too quietly.

One easy way to say it is that the moon is always there, but the sun is bright, so we can’t see it, but when the sun goes away, we can see the moon. In the same way, it’s that cognition that we’re comfortable with. 2 plus 2 is 4. I have to get the kids at 5:00. I’m going to make it an Excel spreadsheet. That part of the brain is like the sun. It’s loud and bright. It obscures the view of this other intuitive part of us that is happening all the time. An easy way to begin to tune in is to listen. Ina is going to have different things to tell you. Listening is one. Get a notebook by your bed and decide to write your dreams because having the intention to listen is the first step in beginning to receive them and record them.

I want to turn it over to Ina on this, but in transition to that, I want to also offer up the why behind doing this. Sometimes, as we work with people at different levels on that continuum, they’re like, “I don’t see the need to do that.” We were talking about the leadership circle, which is an interesting approach to the whole person in leadership. We realized that there are multiple aspects of a leader. Our internal systems, external systems, cultures, dynamics, relationships, and psychology.

If our inner work does create our outer world, this conversation for everybody, whether you’re a leader, parent, whatever role you play in your life, understanding the symbolism and intuitive places starts to give you such a broader lens on how we can act and work together. Ina, I want to turn it back over to you on this conversation because we must bridge the power of this type of work.

How Your Inner Work Creates Your Outer World

There’s this split between body and mind. There are different stories of origin to it, but I can name one as the console of a trend where the decision was the science would be left with a scientist and the mind and then the body experience or consciousness will be with the church. This huge split has created what I believe is reflected as the hard science, the soft stuff. We see it in leadership development and training. We won the technical and the hard stuff. If you want to go and do the coaching, go to this soft stuff. This is the way we’ve labeled. To me, this is an artificial language that continues to feed violence because the inner conflict is there.

I’m going to keep saying, “Remembering to remember.” If we keep coming to our remembering, it’s very easy. Bonnie described it so well from the neuro-biological perspective and how it happens with our minds. It’s nobody’s fault here. As leaders and human beings, we are brought to life in this way. Sometimes, we have teachers and mentors who can support us in our journey.

At any time in every moment, there are openings. Whether you are 7 or 87 years old, if we use that as an excuse to say, “I’m done with my learning, I can go back,” it might be harder because these are habits of mind that have been developed through the years and to undo our habits of mind is very difficult. To me, it’s an illusion that it’s also reflected in the language we speak and the language that we embody.

We think that material is the things we do. The material is who we are and how we show up. Our body is that connector to the materiality to the world that we are around, whether it’s, “I am connecting to another human being at this moment.” It’s through our body that we do that, but we’ve ignored our body. Shar Martell has a very interesting story where he talks about the MIT building. He says that at the top of the building is where all the sciences are. They put the social sciences in the middle and then to the bottom. Anything that had to be artistic was done with the hand or using the body.

It’s a way to associate the body and give it lesser status because it’s not important. There is a movement. Things are shifting and changing. I was talking to a colleague, Chris Lazlo, who teaches at Case Western. He teaches a class on quantum leadership and he says, “My class is an elective, but there are so many people that are signing up for that class that it’s amazing. It’s opening up the space in so many different ways.” He teaches this idea of connection and how we connect back, the practices of connectedness, and this idea that we are one.

That’s why our vision or the program where both Bonnie and I teach have this foundational space or calling to a vision of one humanity. It’s not about being one because we are well also different bodies and ways of experiencing the world. It’s about feeling that relationality, connectedness and showing up for that. One of the exercises I always do in our program is I invite people to get in pairs in a three-minute exercise.

You would know this because you’ve done this with the program. I invite each person for a minute to say something that feels frustrating that it’s a challenge or something that’s going on and the other person just listen. After completing this exercise, the thing that people report is how hard it is to stay without wanting to solve and fix? It’s a human thing because we feel the pain of another human. There is part of that is our empathy. Yet, there is this desire to fix that there’s something wrong with the world and we need to move into action.

 

We want to open up or the invitation to come into your own and start being quiet and listening. Listen first and then you can keep asking questions and keep things in the curiosity space. Curiosity and wonder are the kinds of things we want to come back to. Picasso said, “When we are children, we know that the quality of being an artist comes so easy, but it’s what we lose when we grow up.” How do we can keep that up as we grow up and mature?

Ina, there is much richness to what you shared. First of all, you both know that one of my biggest challenges in the program was not solving problems. For so many years in leadership, I felt a responsibility to solve problems. A lot of people are like, “I have to fix it.” There is also a level of control. They’re like, “I’m helping and doing.” We were very attached to our doing versus our being.

I’ve had many conversations with others about how different it feels when you’re truly present. When someone is truly present to you, you feel that energy and spaciousness. As we grow up, we’re not losing that. You think of a child daydreaming or looking at a cloud formation. I watch my children and I see them being swallowed up by technology. All space of boredom that created dreaming and that created imagination is suddenly being lost to TikTok videos or some other stream that is constantly flowing into us.

We’ve talked about how things are shifting and there have been conversations for years about mindfulness. There are studies, science and actual information about how that affects organizations differently. Yet, we’re still slow to get there. We’ve been living through a pandemic that has made us slow down to some extent but we’re speeding back up again.

What would you tell someone who feels their executive function? “The sun is shining so bright every day because I have to get my kids to school. I have Zoom meetings and grab lunch.” It never stops. How would you guide them to create some of that space? What if they say, “I can’t?” How do we create it better?

When I start to dig into the people who say, “I can’t,” there is so much time in the day that is spent with distraction and empty distractions, scrolling through the phone. It’s endless, the number of people who go to bed with their phone, who stay on the phone until they go to sleep, looking at things or their iPads. Every human being can create a buffer of time in the morning or before they go to bed where they’re quiet. Everything is turned off.

We think that material is the kind of things we do. In fact, material is who we are. It's how we show up. Our body is that connector to the materiality and world we are around. Click To Tweet

If you can’t do it on your own, help yourself. For example, I have a timer. My internet turns off at a certain time at night and doesn’t turn on until a certain time in the morning. At that time, I turned my phone and everything off. I even have my electricity turned off for a certain amount of time during the evening. It is possible. It’s a question of discipline.

When Elizabeth Gilbert spoke at the summit years ago, she told a story about all the ways she wanted to become a rider. She was in her twenties. There’s a woman that she admired. She was following this woman around, wanting to get time and coaching from her. This whole story is on one of the early episodes where we share her talk. The woman turns around and says, “What’s your favorite TV show? Where do you like to go on vacation? What’s your favorite magazine?” She was leading her into this exact point of, “If you have time to watch TV and read the magazine, you have time to write or time to fill your soul with something that you need. You just have to choose it.” Life is a series of choices and outcomes that come from those choices.

Listening To Your Intuition

A lot of times, it’s not conscious. It’s because of how the culture and environment continue to keep us in that loop. You have to decide to break the cycle. Most of the time, you have to choose by intention and sometimes it’s going to be maybe an illness or something external that’s going to help you break that cycle, but you don’t want to get to that place. You want to be intentional.

The other thing that came up for me as we were talking is it reminded me of this idea of self-love and a little story with Hadrian, my son. In the evening, we have this practice of loving-kindness. He was about three years old when we had this mini conversation. There is a line there in the practice that says, “Let’s bring all the faces of the loved one and let’s say for them, may they be happy, peaceful and filled with love.” Hadrian says, “Mom, stop.” I said, “What’s going on?” He’s like, “Do you love yourself?” I said, “Yes, I do love myself.” “Put yourself in there. In the line of all the people, that’s called the loved ones.”

It was such a moment for me to say, “What an interesting observation.” He is noticing that we’re calling all of these loved ones, but mom isn’t calling herself in that space. I always think of that story when I want to check in with myself because generally, exhaustion is when you’re doing everything out there and you’re not nourishing in here. It’s also an act of self-love. Sometimes it’s the practice and intention.

I was having a conversation with my leaders during our retreat about imposter syndrome that hits a lot of people. Whether you’re in business or not, they think, “I’m not that good. Wait until they find out I’m not this.” People carry this fundamental self-doubt of not being where they need to be. Some of the projections and dysfunction in our organizations come from that. It comes from not having a healthy center, knowing who you are, your gifts, and how you contribute to the world.

I’m curious as you came together, you designed the program and having experienced the nuances that you put together in this journey where you take people into different spaces of self-awareness, presence and competency, how did that flow together? What were the elements you wanted to be sure to create for people?

Two things were important as we started. The Center for Excellence in Public Leadership at GW, where I’ve been serving as the Director for Executive Education on Coaching, has been very intentional about this idea of whole-person development and whole-person leadership. Having that grounding vision has been instrumental and key to the design principles. This is a coaching program. It supports people to become professional coaches.

The first intention was to do the work that it takes to transform and to transform consciousness. We say, “It expands inwards to connect outwards.” That’s the e-Co and it also means home. It comes from the Greek word Oikos, which means coming home. It’s a way to remember to come into who we are as human beings.

A way of responding to the global UN sustainable development goals and where we meet them is that we provide an inner way of sustainable development. These were some of the parameters. First, we wanted this transformational experience. The other thing that we also had present is that many programs are out there and knowing that the International Coaching Federation credentials our program.

We knew that the competencies that were present for coaches or coaches that get educated that there were some limitations around the internet inner development piece. We wanted to bridge. We thought that the process and the framework that was out there for coaches was important, but we wanted to bring this other piece, the inner and the outer, if you will, together.

Those were the two intentions. Some of the key capacities that we build in this program are spaciousness, perception, imagination, creativity, inspiration and intuition. Those are the six capacities that have been foundational to this program. They’re weaved in through our curricula. In the first semester, we only place attention on the inner development of the coach. We layout the groundwork for what coaching is but focus on developing that capacity.

We move in the second semester and into practice. Practice is also working with real leaders. We’ve had government organizations we work with because you’ve been part of the program, Kathy, but that also gives a significant real-world touch. It’s a real marriage. My friend, Judy Neil, calls it the edge walker quality that brings together the inner and outer.

I came to coaching much later. I was teaching dreaming to leaders, individuals, performing arts organizations and things like that for a long time before coming into coaching. People were coming to me who were coaches, who felt like they needed coaching on how to coach. I started to think of exactly the limitations that it moves into the action of coaching rapidly. Many of the programs do without enough time spent on what does it mean to be in service? If I haven’t cleared myself, how can I be a reflecting mirror for somebody else? What moved me into coaching was seeing if I was seeing it and seeing if I could bring something to the field by focusing on the inner work.

What you both said is powerful. I almost want to have everyone assimilate what was said. You may keep me honest. I don’t know who said this, let me know, but there was a whole body of work that the consciousness of an organization can’t move beyond the consciousness of its leadership. Do you know who said that?

That’s Richard Barrett. Organizations don’t transform us as peoples do and we cannot. That’s also a quote that Einstein brought together. Different people say it in different ways, but an organization cannot grow beyond the consciousness that the leader brings.

If you broaden organization, whether it’s family, group, volunteer or corporate, if we don’t commit to looking at that inner work landscape, how will we ever evolve to a place of higher action, true interconnectivity and one humanity? If I look at the world around us, we see the divisiveness more than ever, whether it’s on the political front and what’s happening with the pandemic.

On social media, you see violence and finger-pointing. They are unconscious of the fact that this interconnectivity is a powerful unlock for all of humanity. We were on the road of emergence and arriving with each moment that we chose to be present and show up for each other. How can all of the folks reading this conversation take their step forward? I’d love you both to weigh in on this both from how they could get in touch with you, the program, your work and the resources you have? What would you say to people who want to begin the work?

Beginning The Inner Work

One of the things that most people have had is a nightmare. I can’t go to a social event without someone telling me, “I had this nightmare that was a recurring nightmare.” People are always telling me, “The doctor who goes to a social event.” Everybody says, “Can you look at this. I get the dreams.” It’s almost always either a great dream and it’s a movement.

There was a dream that caused someone to completely change their life and that’s far more common than we think. It goes back to what Ina was saying of this illusory division between the heart and the soft, the science and the body, the science and intuition. There is no division, but its illusion keeps people from acknowledging what their inner voice is telling them.

For those who’ve had the dream and are willing to speak about it or willing to let it change their life, they’ve gone on to do so many other things. Sometimes it’s simple. I’ve had people say to me, “I had a dream that I knew not to marry this person. I knew not to take this job.” Sometimes it’s completely huge. I completely changed my life course. It was either the dream that people tell me or it’s a nightmare.

My word to everybody for both in either is to respond to it because we don’t have dreams that we’re meant to receive passively. We’re meant to receive them actively. If there is that inner intuition, “This job isn’t right for me,” explore that. Have the courage to explore it. Whatever the decision might be is down the line, which is telling the courage to face it and in the same way, if there’s a nightmare, all these conflicts you talk about on social media always start inside. If there is a nightmare where I’m running from something, there is something scary and a dark room, respond to it, turn the light on, turn and face what you’re running from. Everything will shift as soon as we start to respond.

You both are keeping me honest on my quotes. Was it Joseph Campbell saying, “What you’re afraid to look at is the greatest gift?” What was that one? I know you know what I’m talking about with that quote but it wasn’t facing that darkness is where the gift lies right there.

 

A lot of people have talked about it. Freud talked about the ego, Carl Jung talked about it too and Karen Hartney talks about the shadows. What we fear is where our gifts are. The other thing is I heard Bonnie talk. There are a couple of ideas, but one thing is to read the Alchemist. If you don’t want to pay attention, you don’t want to catch yourself in the moment, read that book or the little prints. There is a lot of potential opening. Everybody will respond to it differently. It’s this idea that when you want something or you want to move with something, if you listen, the whole universe will conspire to make that thing happen.

The energy moves because the way you pause and question, you’re articulating new energy in your system and that energy response. It responds with an opening with something new perspective. I know this is probably super overused that if you take a walk, don’t bring your phone in the walk. Just walk and notice. I remember when my son was two, I would take this little walk in the neighborhood. I started seeing things around for the first time because he was so slow. You would take little steps and like, “I can’t take this.” I could see the trees, neighbors and meet people differently. That slowing down is an opening.

With, “We’re busy. I don’t have time,” we go back to that and address that. At any moment, even in the busy-ness, taking a moment to notice your breath is another openness. That’s something. If you want to go deeper in your work and you’re ready to move into a new space, you could also reach out to Bonnie or me and talk about the coaching program. There are lots of opportunities there.

Where would they begin to go if they wanted to engage with you?

I would have him look at the website first to take a look at the program and see if that feels right. If questions come, I would have them email me and we can have a conversation. This is the other thing. This is not a program where you register. It’s a program that you apply to. The application is a conversation because it needs to be the right fit for whoever is taking that leap of faith.

It means that you’re open and intentional about doing your inner work. It’s an opportunity to Bonnie’s point to ask yourself whether I’m ready or not. Ask yourself another time and sit with it if you don’t know. That’s probably the better place to start. Ask yourself the question first after you’ve received a little information.

Bonnie, you’ve written a beautiful book and also do individual coaching on the dreamscape. That’s another way to work with you.

What has also been beautiful with Bonnie’s work is that a lot of our students or participants who go through the program go back because they want to deepen the work and that becomes a nice way. Bonnie goes a lot deeper in some of her programmings. Sometimes it’s a door that opens up and then wants to move into the coaching world, but then it goes the other way around because this work continues.

It is a never-ending journey of emergence for all of us. I find the conversation with both of you so rich that we could talk for many hours, but we’re out of time and I want to be very respectful of your schedule. I want to close out with one last question and then we’ll end the conversation. I always end these chats with a piece of wisdom and much wisdom has already been shared. It’s been deep, but is there anything you would want to leave our readers with from some of the best wisdom you’ve ever received or parting thoughts? Bonnie, I’ll start with you on that.

It all goes back to the same thing, listen to the inside. I can’t say enough about how my father and my grandmother imparted that to me. They would ask me a question and say, “What’s your inside answer?”

Ina, what about you?

Practice and remember to be intentional. Invite yourself into your remembering and practice it. It takes 10,000 repetitions or 66 days to build a new habit.

I would add to that compassion for your practice and walk, knowing that sometimes we fall into old habits and other times we emerge into something new because that is the process. It’s not something that we arrived at. We keep walking the walk. I would like to publicly thank both of you, not only for the powerful effect you’ve had on me and the journey that I’ve taken with you to share, but the work that you are doing in the world, the commitment to your inner guidance and serving the greatest of good here on the planet and for humanity. Thank you for all that you do.

Thank you for catalyzing the voices and for being a vehicle for change and good.

Thank you, Kathy.

Important Links:

• e-Co Leadership Program
• Ina– Ina Gjikondi
• International Coaching Federation Certified Program
• Hadrian Series
• Bonnie Buckner
• International Institute for Dreaming and Imagery
• Dream Yourself Into Being

About Ina Gjikondi

Ina Gjikondi is a teacher, speaker, mother, creative thinker, innovator, poet and co-curator of creative learning experiences that expand consciousness in the world. Ina serves as the Director of Executive Education & Coaching and as the Founder & e-Co Leadership Coaching Program Director at the George Washington University’s Center for Excellence in Public Leadership.

The e-Co Leadership Coaching Certification (e-CLC) is an International Coaching Federation certified professional foundational program rooted in the cultivation of energetic stability, by expanding, emerging, exchanging and evolving in co-creation, co-connection, co-action and co-movement in service to the greater good. Ina believes in coaching as a way of being and an invitation to the practice of anchored capacity, where we learn to stay present, practical and poetic, to e-xpanding inward to co-nnect outward and make a positive difference in the world.

Ina works with people across the globe to awaken the leadership capacity through whole-system knowing and being, mobilizing the capacities of spaciousness, perception, imagination, inspiration, intuition and creativity. Ina believes that our work as humanity is not about finding answers, it’s about getting very clear in our questions and getting ourselves out of the way, allowing the collective field to emerge in active experimentation and action.

Prior to moving to the US, Ina was an active United Nations advocate, political campaign professional and founder of several nonprofit organizations in her native home of Albania. She is inspired by her son Hadrian, who teaches her to slow down and show up for life with genuine curiosity. To develop this creative dialogue, she founded Hadrian Series, a learning hub to support families through embodied conversations, celebrating the wonders of life every day.

Ina’s calling for the world is summed up in four words, two of which have been attributed to Johann Wolfgang von Goethe as the last pronounced words before his death, “More Light and Love!”.

About Bonnie Buckner

Bonnie Buckner teaches dreaming and imagery techniques to individuals and organizations for individual development, creativity and project manifestation, and to find creative solutions to social and global challenges. She has a PhD in psychology. Her academic work has centered on the use of images as cognitive tools for behavior change.

She is the founder and head of the International Institute for Dreaming and Imagery, and she serves as a Senior Fellow at the George Washington University Center for Excellence in Public Leadership and is co-Faculty Director at that Center’s e-Co Leadership Coaching Certification Program. Her book, Dream Your Self into Being teaches some of the basics of dreamwork and how she has used them in her personal life.

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conscious leaders, dream weavers, inner self, Inner Work, listening to your intuition, quantum leadership

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